And so it looks like I found the home economics class. Is that small thing over there really a fridge?
Recipe books.
This looks too familiar from my school years. Our class was divided into kitchen groups and we would cook stuff together for a full school year.
A slide showing different kinds of sieves. Have they really studied like this back in the days?
The spice cupboard. There’s actually still some left.
I don’t think it works anymore.
The curtains just scream the 1980’s or 1990’s.
The tableware here hasn’t been treated very well.
The pupils have made posters describing different food cultures.
Another familiar type of chairs.
I think they have been dead for some time now.
The home economics book includes a chapter about Finland as a cheese country. It’s probably a short chapter.
Wonder what has happened here.
Oh, an English test. Feel free to practise your Finnish!
Another small room by the corridor. As there has been a blackboard on the wall, something must have been taught here.
This is where the corridor ends. I’ve now come through the entire first floor.
The school kitchen. Now this is a very, very strange feature of this particular building. The kitchen and canteen are almost always on the ground floor or even in the basement. But not in here.
If the previous photo was the kitchen, this must have been the canteen.
A standard feature of abandoned buildings: a pairless shoe.
Somebody has been saving natural yoghurt buckets for their collection and then forgotten them here.
Here we have the side stairway, and as I’ve already explored most of the first floor, it would be a natural thing to go up. For some reason I didn’t.
In the early 90’s when I was in high school, the schools were still very segregated by student gender here in the United States. As for me, I was considered female in school and therefore was enrolled in home economics.
In grade eight, my parents moved me to yet another school, where my father made it very clear that I was being raised as a boy (he lied), and I was enrolled in shop class accordingly. I wish that I could have taken both classes simultaneously, as each one taught me valuable life skills.
When I joined the work force, I received on-the-job training in trades as part of my fire department career. It was there that I was taught about plumbing, electrical work, welding, and all the other things that go along with working in the fire service.
The slide with the various sieves was interesting; I have never seen anything like this in terms of home economics class. However, the fire department training does have similar slides and exhibits that point out the different types of equipment, such as hose nozzles, forcible entry tools, emergency medical equipment, etc.
All in all, you have again documented some very interesting finds! 🙂
Thank you!
It seems that the schools in the US and Finland were somewhat different. In grades 3 and 4 everybody was forced to do whop and handworks, and after that we would choose. All boys enrolled to shop, all girls to handworking.
Home economics was mandatory in grade 7 and optional in grades 8 and 9. Everybody loved it so much, that everybody chose it regardless of gender. It was one of our favorite subjects.
I hope, you will find, too, that this school was full of very interesting finds!